Floating
by Eve Levine
Summary: Opie's not really thinking when he un-anchors himself and dives after Jax. He's not thinking about how deep Jax has drifted and if the water out there is over his head too. MASSIVE SPOILERS for Season 5 and the episode Laying Pipe.


**_Warning: This fic and the note below contain massive spoilers for Season 5. Read no further if you haven't seen it yet._**

_Author's Note: All of these characters belong to Kurt Sutter. I own nothing. I feel like I should have worn a crash helmet while watching this last season because the episode Laying Pipe completely wrecked me. I've been sitting on this one-shot for awhile, for months actually, because Opie really does deserve a happier ending than the one he got on the show. If any character deserved some happiness, it was Opie. **Verda Napoli **wrote him a gorgeous ending in her story **Hands and Arms. **If you're an Opie fan, you should definitely check it out. Alas, my muse is a canon girl at heart, so here's my offering._

_This one is for **Norrific **and **Phoenix**. *hugs*_

* * *

_There are five of them. Opie tries to keep them all in his sight as they shift and move, circling like sharks. He swings the pipe at the closest one and lands the first blow. Blood sprays from the man's mouth. Opie doesn't have time to watch him go down. There are others darting in, looking for their opening, and Opie wants to take some of them with him when he falls._

Opie's first kill is an accident. He takes out a tweaker Nord when SAMCRO targets one of their meth houses. The poor bastard must have been sleeping instead of cooking, because Opie doesn't see him through the windows when he cases the place and sets up the boom. He only hears the man's agonized scream as the house goes up in flames. A drug pushing Aryan is no great loss to anybody. Still, it's the first drop of blood on Opie's hands. He wants to go over the night with Jax, talk out the twisting in his gut, and put into words the sound of this dying man as he burned, but Jax is inside on smuggling charges, and the rest of the club are sliding him shots and congratulations, slapping him on the back like he's just popped his cherry.

Only Piney seems to catch the drift of his silence as Opie sits at the bar and contemplates the peeling label on his beer bottle. His old man comes over, bringing with him a fifth of tequila and a couple of shot glasses, lining them up for the two of them. He also settles a warm and heavy hand on Opie's shoulder, squeezing reassurance into Opie's tense muscles.

"This shit gets easier, Son," Piney rumbles as he takes the stool next to Opie. "The first one's always the hardest."

"I know, Pop." Opie says. "Thanks."

"You should go home," Piney suggests.

Opie shakes his head and takes a shot. Bringing this jumble he's feeling home to Donna seems like a bad idea. She's probably already tucked into their bed, passed out, her belly getting bigger every day with his baby, and the last thing she needs is him bleeding all over her and stripping away the delicate layer of denial she keeps between herself and the harder truths about the club.

Piney eyes him and again sees right through what Opie doesn't say. "Don't tell her about it, Son." He advises, an edge of impatience slicing through his words. "You never take this shit home. It stays here." Opie nods and keeps nursing his beer. "Someday, when we've got a lot more of this," Piney says holding up the tequila. "I'll tell you the story of my first one."

"Vietnam?" Opie guesses.

Piney exhales roughly, his eyes darkening, his hand coming up to run through his hair, and seeming lost in years long past. "Yeah… and I'll never forget the smell." He grits out before he stands up, his hand pressing down once again on Opie's shoulder. "Go home to her, Son. I'm not going to say it again."

Opie heeds his father's advice. He goes home, feeling dirty, like what he's done this night contaminates him, covers him, like a fine layer of soot on his skin. And he worries this soot could rub off on the sheets and spread to Donna, corrupting her and this part of his life. Still, he needs to touch her. Opie climbs into bed behind Donna. He wraps her up in his arms and buries his face in the nape of her neck. Donna stirs, finds his hand in the dark, and laces her fingers with his.

"Hey, baby." Donna murmurs sleepily, turning her head and kissing the arm he's slipped under her like a pillow. "Wasn't expecting you tonight."

"Change of plans." Opie sighs. Donna twists in his arms, bringing her hand up to cup his cheek, and catches his eyes.

"Are you okay?" She asks.

Opie breaks their eye contact and hides his face again in her neck, unable to look at her while he lies. "Yeah, I'm good. Just a rough night."

"Do you wanna talk about it?" She asks, turning back around and settling against his chest.

"No, it's not a big thing." He mutters, and he's saved from any further questions when Donna gasps and begins rubbing her stomach.

"The baby's been beating the hell out of me all night." Donna groans. "She keeps creeping up into my ribs, and fuck it hurts." Donna moves Opie's hand to the top of her belly and presses his palm into her skin. "Can you help me push her down?"

"Yeah…" Opie answers softly He smiles when his daughter protests the gentle downward pressure of his hand by kicking back at him. She doesn't go without a fight, but the baby does shift into a more comfortable position for Donna, who barely has time to thank him before her eyes close and her hand resting on top of his falls away. Opie kisses her shoulder and makes a concrete decision right then to listen to his father and never tell Donna anything about the club. He wants their new family to stay whole and unsullied. And he manages to find sleep that way, letting Donna's steady breathing and the fluttering movements of their baby under his fingers, drown out the screams of burning men.

Opie's next kill is easier. The one after that barely registers.

_The big fucker, the one he needed to watch out for, gets behind him. He lifts Opie into the air and squeezes until a few of Opie's ribs give way with a sharp crack. It is agony. _

_He couldn't keep the club away from Donna. Not in the ways that mattered. He failed her and their kids. He failed their family, and his old man. That's a weight too heavy to carry most days. And it makes it hard to look at his kids. It makes it hard to get out of bed. _

Piney's bike is like the holy fucking grail to Opie when he's small. Some kids want a spaceship, or a horse, or a pet dinosaur, and while Opie wouldn't say no to a Light Saber so he could be a real Jedi, what he wants most is a motorcycle that looks exactly like his dad's.

After years of letting Opie sit on the bike while it's parked, and teaching him about how it all works, Piney takes Opie for his first real ride when he's seven. He takes Opie out to a deserted stretch of road, far away from Mary's anxious gaze, and plunks his giant helmet on Opie's head. Piney climbs in front of Opie and Opie's fingers move up to trace the letters on the back of Piney's cut. He wants one of these too. He wants a Reaper to wear on his back and he doesn't understand why he has to wait until he grown.

"You need to hang on, Son," Piney says, reaching back and guiding Opie's little hands around his waist. "You hang on, and you don't let go for nothin'. If you let go, you're gonna fall off, and that's gonna tear you up. And then your mom will have both our asses. Can you do that, Son? Can you hang on?"

Opie nods solemnly and hangs on tight, as Piney starts the bike. The rumble of the engine vibrates through his body, almost like it's singing to him. When the bike starts moving, the air rushes against his face, trying to steal his breath.

"Faster!" Opie shouts into the wind. Piney laughs and speeds up the bike. And then Opie's pretty sure he knows what flying feels like.

_The blow across his face hurts worse than he thought it would, and yet not at all. He's a scarecrow, boneless, as he collapses to the cement floor. He's seeing white, as salty splashes of his blood fill his mouth. All he can hear is a high faint ringing and he reaches out a hand, panic setting in as he searches for something, or someone. He can't remember where he is, or why he's there._

_Opie recovers his breath as his vision returns, blurry and indistinct, but he can see. He looks up, finding who he was searching for, and he remembers_.

The summer after Thomas dies, Opie's parents pack up the old school bus they converted into an RV and set off to see the country. Mary claims they're bringing Jax along to keep Opie out of trouble, but he overhears his parents talking one night about getting Jax out from between J.T. and Gemma. Piney grumbling something about letting them tear each other to pieces without a captive audience.

Opie's excited to have him along, and they spend most of their nights on the roof of the bus, looking at the stars, and talking about the days when they'll join their dads in the club, and maybe daring to dream of when the two of them will sit together at the head of the Redwood table. They very carefully don't talk about Thomas, but Jax does tell Opie that Gemma tried to stop him from coming on the trip. Says he heard her screaming that she would be dead and cold before she ever let Jax out of her sight again.

"Then why are you here?" Opie asks, and Jax throws him a sideways grin.

"My dad overruled her. He told me to pack a bag and then he dropped me off at your house."

"Is she pissed?" Opie asks, already fully aware of the gale force winds that blow with Gemma's fury.

Jax snorts and nods his head. "Oh yeah. She lost it." He says, and then they settle back into an easy silence.

The bus makes it all the way to Michigan. After showing them the tiny farming town he grew up in, and couldn't get away from fast enough, Piney takes them to Lake Michigan, which he says was his favorite place to go as a kid. It's the biggest lake Opie's ever seen. He can't see across it, or the end of the shoreline, but Opie grew up next to the Pacific Ocean, so these little waves seem tame. He and Jax shrug at each other when Piney seems to expect a bigger reaction out of them.

"What's the big deal? We could see this at home with bigger waves?" Opie asks unimpressed.

"The big deal is that you can get in there without worrying about a shark biting your ass." Piney huffs back. "Now go have fun before I slap both of you."

"Hey, be careful! Not too deep. That storm we had yesterday made the current stronger." Mary hollers after them pointing at a posted warning sign. He and Jax ignore her. They don't slow down as they run into the water. They race until they lose their balance and splash face first into the waves. Opie surfaces first and leaps at Jax, dunking him before he can fight back. Jax retaliates by knocking Opie's feet out from under him. Jax is laughing for what seems like the first time all summer.

The current is strong, but it's fun to horse around in, that is until they want to get out. Opie's tired and hungry, and he wants to collapse on his towel and rest. The water doesn't agree with him. It pulls on Opie, tugging him deeper as he tries to carve a path through it. For every wave knocking him forward, there is a quieter, longer, stronger force pulling him backwards. He digs his toes into the sandy bottom and anchors himself. It takes all of his strength as he makes slow, steady progress, fighting the current, step by dragging step.

"Ope!" He hears Jax sputter. Opie turns around and Jax is twenty feet behind him now, moving further into deeper water with the recess of every wave.

"Dig your feet in!" Opie hollers at him and Jax nods and dips under the water for a second before bobbing back to the surface.

"I can't touch the bottom here." Jax chokes as he spits out water. Opie can touch. He shot up six inches over the school year, making Mary moan about the cost of keeping him in clothes and shoes, and leaving him towering over the kids at school, including Jax.

"Can you swim it?" Opie asks helplessly, knowing it's a dumb question. He couldn't swim it himself. Only his feet stubbornly dug into the sand is keeping him from being swept out too. Jax shakes his head and goes under again, coming back up choking, as he's tossed by a strong wave.

Opie's not really thinking when he un-anchors himself and dives after Jax. He's not thinking about how deep Jax has drifted and if the water there is over his head too. He's not thinking about anything but the two of them working together to climb the hell out of this stupid over-sized lake.

The water is over his head out where Jax was pulled, the current strong. If they swim constantly, kicking their hardest, they can tread water, and it wears them out. It's Jax, turning red from the strain, who finds their solution.

"We gotta let it pull us out farther." Jax pants next to him. Opie bobs and looks at him like he's lost his mind. The shore is right there. He can see it. The shore is safety. He's not letting himself drift out into the deeper water.

"I can almost touch here. We go out deeper, we're gonna drown."

"No Ope, my dad taught me about these. We gotta let it pull us out and then swim down shore and _then_ swim back in. We gotta go _around_ the current, not fight it," Jax says, his breath labored. "Dude, I'm tired. If we keep doing what we're doing now, I'm gonna drown."

It's not like Jax to offer up a weakness so easily, so Opie knows he's serious. He looks back at the shore. Piney and Mary haven't figured out something is wrong. His mom is unpacking things from the cooler and his dad is bending over the grill, messing with the coals. Opie hollers for them. He hollers for anybody to help them, but the wind swallows his voice, and nobody looks in their direction.

"We gotta float Ope. It's the only way we get out of here. Trust me bro, we got this." Jax says and then flops on his back.

Opie decides to trust him, spreads out his arms and legs, relaxes his muscles, and allows himself to be swept away with Jax into deep water. It's a relief, peaceful even, to stop struggling and just rest, giving himself over to the current. Tendrils of cold water reach up from the dark places never warmed by the sun, and wrap around his wrists and ankles, making him worry about what lives, and swims, and hunts in the depths they're floating over.

"So glad we're not in the ocean." Jax says next to him, as if he's read Opie's mind.

"Yeah, me too."

_Opie can see Jax clearly now. He can see Chibs too, though he can't hear their screams. Opie would pump a clip into Clay and burn SAMCRO to the ground if he could. He'd let the club die for what it's done to him, to his family, to every person it's touched. But not these two brothers. Never these two, who still believe there's something worth saving. He'd never set Jax and Chibs on fire._

Donna leaves Opie's welcome home party early. Chibs offers her a beer and she declines, working herself out from under Opie's arm and claiming she's gotta go relieve the sitter. Her smile is tight when she tells him to stay at the clubhouse for as long as he wants. Her smile's been tight all night.

Opie watches her go. Watches how she winds the long way around to room, avoiding Gemma and Clay, so she can say goodbye to Jax and Piney, who are talking by the bar. She high fives Jax and gives him a one-armed hug before turning to Piney and kissing his cheek, her face lighting with real happiness for the first time all night.

This is a new Donna, one Opie realizes, he doesn't know very well. The times he spent a few weeks or months in County didn't faze her. She was always waiting for him, ready to leap into his arms, wrap her legs around his waist, and welcome him home properly. But five years is a long time to wait for somebody. He can see that the comforting smiles, and the solid reassuring grip of her hand when she visited him in Chino, were in some ways a facade. That quiet, fervent support she gave him when he was inside, something that helped him get though the long nights, was covering up the truth. Donna was, and still is, pissed.

Chibs watches her leave as well, eyebrows raised. He hands the offered beer to Opie, unspoken questions making his mouth twitch. Opie takes the beer, shaking his head and shrugging in answer to the questions Chibs doesn't ask. Chibs smiles and slaps Opie's back, turning him towards the center of the room. He bellows for the crowd to drink to Opie and a chorus of cheers ring out.

Later, when Opie's feeling his liquor, not enough to make him sloppy, but definitely enough to make him sentimental, he finds himself sharing another drink and a joint with Chibs.

"You coming back to the garage, now that you're out?" Chibs asks, and Opie sighs because this question has strings, a double meaning that has everything to do with Clay's payroll and nothing to do with fixing cars. He knows Donna wants him to earn straight. She had her dad pull strings at the mill to get him a job as far away from Teller-Morrow as possible. On their last visit at the prison, he told her he'd think about it, and watched as her eyes flashed, and she disentangled her hand from his grip.

"Donna wants me at the mill with her family, but it's a shit job." Opie shrugs.

"That'll make your P.O. happy." Chibs points out.

Opie nods and before he can think, the words are out of his mouth. "Would you ever earn..." He starts to ask and then catches himself. This is nobody's business but his and Donna's. At least not until he makes a decision. "Never mind. Fuck it. Forget about it." Opie finishes, but Chibs is an observant bastard sometimes, and this time he answers the question Opie doesn't ask.

"Different woman, different story, brother." Chibs says and takes a deep hit off the joint before passing it to Opie. "I'd be dead without this club. Would've bled out in an alley after Jimmy came after me, but Ryan sewed me up, and they sent me here. And here I'll stay." Chibs declares and then takes a quick look around the room to see if anyone is listening. "Do what you want." Chibs says quietly and then he leaves Opie to stew on that.

The house is quiet when he walks in later that night. Opie sets his keys down and looks around. The house is strange to him, unfamiliar. The paint on the walls, the furniture, all of it has changed and been re-arranged as the years passed. It's not the house he left five years ago. It's not the family he remembers, and Opie isn't sure where he fits into it.

Opie makes a sandwich, drops heavily onto the couch, and grabs the remote. He kicks his shoes off and stretches out. It's an odd feeling being free, having the luxury to crash out on his couch if he wants. He's been living on Chino's schedule, and under their control, and watching his back for so long, that he can barely suppress the jumpy, nagging feeling that he should be somewhere else, doing something, on somebody else's orders. And he muses on that as he drifts to sleep, because it's easier to think about than the bills on the kitchen table or how Donna would receive him if he crawled into bed with her.

Donna shakes him awake early in the morning just as the sunlight is starting to shine in their windows. Opie jumps, reaching out to defend himself before his eyes are open, because people touching him while he's sleeping hasn't been a good thing for many years. Donna backs away. "What are you doing out here?" She asks.

"Don't know. Must have fallen asleep watching TV." Opie rasps as he takes in his surroundings and tries to slow down his rapidly beating heart. Donna looks at him like she's knows he's lying. It's a sad look, tinged with regret.

"You should come to bed. The kids won't be up for a couple of hours." Donna looks down at his feet hanging of the edge of the couch and she starts to smile. "Come on, that couch is way too small for you anyway." Donna reaches out her hand for him. Opie takes her hand and lets her lead him into their bedroom.

It's been too long. They're shy with each other as they undress. Cautious in a way that aches through Opie's chest. Her body is different and the same all at once. Not that she's ever been heavy, but she was still soft from carrying Kenny when he went inside. Now she is firm, toned like she was when they started dating, and her kiss is just as tentative as it was in those early days. Opie lifts her up suddenly and sets her on their dresser, smiling when she squeaks in surprise, and it eases some of strain between them. The clouds leave Donna's eyes and she cups his cheeks in her hands, her legs winding around his hips and pulling him tight against her.

"I've _missed _you, baby." She whispers against his lips and crashes her mouth against his, all caution forgot. Opie returns the kiss and he can feel how much she's missed him, and how much he's missed her. She built a life for their kids and kept their family humming along as she waited for him. She _waited_ for him for five years. That truth hits him like a train, wrecking him. He wants to crush her to his chest. He wants inside her now. He doesn't want to wait another second. Opie picks her up again and walks backwards until his legs bump against their bed. He free-falls backwards, making Donna laugh as they hit the mattress, and he knows as her eyes get serious again and he rolls her beneath him, that he's gonna take that job at the mill. He owes her that much.

_It was a promise he couldn't keep. The club is too rooted in him, too much of who he is as a man. He did get his time at the head of the table for a brief year, and he was good at it, but that was before he knew exactly how deep the rot in SAMCRO had spread. Before he knew all the history. And now Opie is getting out the only way he knows how. The only way that will keep._

_Opie locks eyes with Jax. Jax's mouth is open, face red, as he pounds on the glass. Jax is still fighting against the current, but they are in the ocean now, and to Opie, Jax looks like a drowning man. But Jax is a smart guy, he'll remember how to float, he'll remember how to work with and around the forces pulling them down. Jax will find a way to make it right. _

_Or he won't, but that matters little to Opie now._

_There's no way to put his life back together. There's no fire hot enough to forge new dreams out of these broken pieces. Not when his world is grey and his hands smear ash on everything he touches. There's nothing left for him but vengeance. Nothing left but to burn, and to fight, and to bleed. And Opie is just so tired. _

_He isn't drowning anymore. He isn't struggling. He's being swept away, and he feels nothing except relief. _

_Opie smiles..._


End file.
